English Chess Forum

Nothing is in stone yet, but our current planning assumes that an August 2020 "3 digit list" will be published for those requiring an August list for the 2020-1 season. This will gives leagues a season to see how monthly grades are working in practice, before commiting to changes (for 2021-2). Brian...

Nick, Your formula is correct and I agree with your proposed change.

You have calibrated the system so that the expected score per game is (difference in ratings)/200 + .5. The Elo system is calibrated to about (difference in ratings)/k + .5, where k is somewhere between 700 and 800 depending where you sit on the FIDE/ECF conversion debate. I'd suggest that your "20"...

At the moment I am considering (for August 2019 onwards) FIDE rating the third section at Hampstead, this will probably be Under 1700 (and you would also have to be Under ECF 135). What do you think? As in the other sections, all players will ideally be ECF Gold members or pay a £10 supplement to t...

Having reflected overnight I am not going to write at further length. I think my point has been made and I stand by it. What most forum regulars will not have seen is a message Angus French sent to the graders mailing list (where all replies then bounce backwards and forwards to all recipients) abo...

I'm not suggesting that the ECF starts paying volunteers. It's more a matter of determining what bronze members get in value. So are you suggesting that if the ECF's membership scheme were abandoned tomorrow, the volunteers would all down tools? I'm not trying to be argumentative, just wondering wh...

My main criticism of the table produced at Council and repeated here is that the membership get substantial benefit from all the voluntary work put in. Surely it washes through with the advantage that there's no VAT. Thus add to Expenditure "Cost of grading" add to Income "Value of Unpaid work on g...

But I swallowed at least some of the `grassroots players are being taxed to pay for international chess` argument that was not entirely dissimilar to the `leaving the EU will free up 350 billion for the NHS` claim ... and now has as much credibility. The ECF's principle source of finance is levies ...

Hi David,

I was there to applaud his achievement! I'm sure at the least, photographs will appear in due course. I suspect that the criteria for board 5 awards included something lower than seven games.

Mick Norris wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 24, 2019 3:08 pm

That's an amazing result for the 65+ team

Board prizes - silver for Keith, gold for John Emms, gold for Tony Stebbings, bronze for Ian Snape

And bronze for Brian Hewson

I suppose there's a good reason to get the old 'uns champions settled in very early for the 2019-20 season.

You need to be careful with the treatment of F-grades. Your percentages give the perception of solid growth whereas most of the average (21-19=) 2%pa growth is explained by giving F category players a grade in 2015. Category F is also the source of many leavers. I doubt if any of this alters your an...

I haven't done an age analysis like Angus', but I would add a word of warning. When looking at grades from longer periods there are a surprising number of "rentries". These players leave the list in one period only to reenter after a period. Over the period 2009-19 (using only July lists) over 3500 ...

Hello Brian I've only just started reading this stuff. If you are going ELO type, how do you plan to ensure consistency across junior grades where some play a high proportion of adults and others play a much smaller proportion of adults? I'm not exactly sure of the problem you are concerned about. ...

The February update was published on 5th February. LOL. He means the update due on Feb 29th And when is it appearing, please? If ever....... If things go well over the weekend, then I expect the March update to be published in the first half of next week. The plan is to move back to month end updat...